Cooperation with African countries

African countries are becoming more and more important for European politics and thus also for Austria. To strengthen intercontinental cooperation funding programmes have been and still are massively increased.

Erasmus+: While around seven percent of the budget from external financial instruments were reserved for sub-Saharan Africa until 2020 around a quarter of the international funds is available for this region in the new phase that lasts until 2027. Demand had already far exceeded the available funds before as the political focus increasingly turned to Africa.

In addition to European Union programmes (Erasmus+ Higher Education Mobility, Capacity Building in Higher Education and Erasmus Mundus) Austria invests specifically in cooperation with African countries. The Austrian Development Cooperation – with the APPEAR programme implemented by the OeAD – has already supported 34 "Academic Partnership" and "Advanced Academic Partnership" projects in sub-Saharan Africa.

Together with the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna the OeAD launched the Austrian-African Research Network (Africa-UniNet) in 2020. In this programme 40 international research projects with African higher education institutions and research institutions were carried out in 2022 from two calls. From the third call 21 cooperation projects will start their research work as of the summer of 2023. Thus, a total of 61 projects have been funded since the start of Africa-UniNet. By the end of 2022 Africa-UniNet had 68 member institutions, 42 of which from African countries and 26 from Austria.

To systematically promote scientific and research cooperation with African partners the second Africa-UniNet General Assembly was held at Egerton University in Kenya in October 2022 together with an Erasmus+ cooperation seminar. 130 people from 70 different institutions from Austria and 16 African countries – among which rectors, representatives of international offices, professors, lecturers as well as alumni and students – took part in the three-day meeting.

In the 2022 call 13 higher education institutions applied for Erasmus+ funding for the sub-Saharan Africa region. Shortly after the seminar it already became apparent that cooperation within Erasmus+ had increased significantly. 19 applications with Africa were submitted in the call of 2023.

Africa-UniNet provides a platform for creating new academic networks and intensifying existing scientific cooperation between Austrian and African member institutions. With the help of Africa-UniNet participating researchers can collaborate and pool knowledge resources for common goals.

40 cooperation projects have been approved until 2022. They cover many disciplines, from medicine, health, social work and sociology to agriculture, water resource management and art. Common to all projects is a collaborative and participatory approach and the goal of contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

An APPEAR celebration was held on 28 June 2022: The higher education cooperation programme funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) and implemented by the OeAD has funded 51 Academic Partnerships between Austrian higher education institutions and universities and research institutions in the ADC's southern priority countries over the past twelve years – with 43 of them successfully completed and eight currently ongoing. 19 Preparatory Fundings were financed in 2022. Moreover, 156 students from these countries have successfully completed a master's or PhD programme at an Austrian higher education institution so far. Over the entire term APPEAR has a funding volume of around 40 million euros. The programme has been extended until 2027. APPEAR is an important strategic instrument for the systematic use of science, research and teaching to gradually implement development policy goals – such as poverty reduction – and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

27 of 43 projects already completed were carried out in countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, Senegal, Burkina Faso. APPEAR has contributed significantly to the institutional strengthening of institutional and personal relations with African higher education institutions and research institutions. Thus, APPEAR sees itself as a complementary programme to the higher education network Africa-UniNet – in both of these programmes research initiatives are also repeatedly proposed and initiated by alumni whose academic education took place within the framework of APPEAR.

The two-volume research documentation provides an exciting insight and a look behind the scenes of the transnational development research adventure, it analyses the theoretical, methodological and research practice aspects and illustrates how important science and research are for improving the living conditions of people, especially in poor and structurally weak areas and countries.

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